I Heart Hippie Day

Anyone that knows me knows I’m a little hippie deep down inside. So I think Earth Day is pretty neat because it gets people everywhere to channel their inner hippie.

I think about the earth A LOT. Annoyingly so, probably. I’m a rabid recycler – to the point of rescuing returnables from the trash; carrying my soup can home after work because there isn’t a recycling program there; and even bringing my own travel mug to the cafeteria at work. I think the earth and her resources are too precious to endanger them knowingly. It’s a spiritual thing for me.

I’m also kind of compulsive about researching my food. This gets me a lot of raised eyebrows, and I’m sure many of my friends feel judged because I tend to like to share what I learn. But the truth is, I am just constantly amazed at how much poison is allowed to go into the things people think are healthy, and how the food industry targets children. It’s a total injustice, and another thing about me is that I’m all about justice. Where are the ethics?!? *shakes fist at the sky*

An example that comes to mind right now is Gatorade. I have a couple of athletic kids who looooove Gatorade. They were drinking G2 because it was kind of the “in” thing to drink with their friends, I guess. I was ignorant. I knew it was full of sugar, but it had electrolytes in it, right? And they are exercising and losing a lot of electrolytes, right? Yeah. I didn’t know. And as a result, they didn’t know. We were uninformed, and I was foolishly trusting an advertisement. (And I’m mad at myself because I know better, right? Don’t we know better than to trust advertisements?) Well, I recently did some research on Splenda for my own purposes, I was using it in my coffee, and I knew intuitively it was bad for me, and I wanted to know more. And while I was learning that sucralose could be causing the kidney problems I’ve been having, I also learned that G2 is artificially sweetened with sucralose!! I was outraged. Kids aren’t supposed to have aspartame or splenda, especially while they’re growing. Everyone knows that! It causes all sorts of health issues, and there have been no longterm studies – how dare they market G2 to young people? When I told my son what was in his G2, he put the bottle down like it was going to blow up with the slightest impact, and he just looked at me with such a disbelief that he’d been drinking it. He said he wasn’t going to drink that stuff anymore. And I have noticed that he’s been reaching for water so much more often. I’m not saying that he hasn’t had a regular gatorade a few times, or that even that is good for him, because it’s not. But I like that my kiddo is making an informed choice. I like knowing that when he decides to have a sports drink, he does so knowing what kind of health problems it causes.

Informed choice is the crux of the new hippie movement we have going here. A lot of folks think the Green thing is nothing more than a fad – I read recently that because of the recession, people were going to forget all about being green and go back to cheaper is better. But I just laughed at that. People, truly going green is often way cheaper than you think. And knowledge is priceless.

Don’t believe me? Check this out:
1 gatorade costs roughly a dollar (maybe more) at the grocery story
if I have two kids and they each drink 1 gatorade each time they have an athletic practice or event, and they each have three per week, that’s 6 gatorades a week. Or $6 a week. (We have a Brita filter and reusable water bottles, so the cost there is negligible.)

If I previously wanted to buy cage free certified humane eggs at $3 a dozen but didn’t think I could afford them because they are twice what regular eggs cost at $1.50 a dozen… guess what? I just found the money to buy the eggs. AND I improved the health of my family. AND I have money left over to save for a new Brita filter. That is sweet.

Hippies Rule. Haters Drool.